Amen Dunes, a.k.a. psychedelic New York songwriter Damon McMahon, has at last announced the follow-up to his fantastic 2014 album Love. Freedom is out March 30 from Sacred Bones. To introduce the new record, he’s released the slinky “Miki Dora,” a song inspired by famed midcentury surfer and convicted financial fraudster Miklos “Miki” Dora. McMahon offered the following self-referential statement explaining the fascination:
Miki Dora was arguably the most gifted and innovative surfer of his generation and the foremost opponent of surfing’s commercialization. He was also a lifelong criminal and retrograde: a true embodiment of the distorted male psyche. He was a living contradiction; both a symbol of free-living and inspiration, and of the false heroics American culture has always celebrated. With lyrics of regret and redemption at the end of one’s youth, the song is about Dora, and McMahon, but ultimately it is a reflection on all manifestations of mythical heroic maleness and its illusions.
The “Miki Dora” video features Boomer Feith (son of fashion designer Tracy Feith) running in slow-motion through Manhattan, interspersed with vintage surf footage clips and shots of McMahon as a faintly sinister narrator. Watch, listen, and see the Freedom album art and track list below.
